


A Heart That Wants Your Heart

by lady_ragnell



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 23:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12352578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: Éponine is surprised when Grantaire wants to introduce her to the latest love of his life. When she goes to the children's museum to meet whoever it is, Grantaire introduces her to Cosette.





	A Heart That Wants Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merelydovely](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merelydovely/gifts).



> Written for **merelydovely** 's fic-for-donations prompt.
> 
> Title from Mary Lambert's "Know Your Name."

“I'm in love.”

Éponine gives serious thought to ignoring Grantaire, who's cast himself across her couch like a romance novel heroine. He's in love every week or two and it's never serious, just an excuse to be dramatic and wax poetic about someone's eyes. She's got better shit to do today, like grocery shopping or washing her hair or something.

But he's here to help her sort out her fucking utilities bill again and he helped Azelma write a college essay a few weeks ago, so she can probably listen to whatever this is all about. “Okay, so, what are they like?”

“Beautiful,” Grantaire says promptly, and Éponine expected that, and expects a catalog of virtues to follow, but instead he falls silent. “Smartest person I've ever met, I think,” he finally adds. “And also really stupid in some ways, but once you look you just … you can't look away. You know?”

Éponine puts down her phone, where she was trying to figure out what the hell happened to her electrical charges. Grantaire is articulate unless he's really serious about something, when he tends to break off into disjointed sentences. When he talks about people he supposedly loves, he gives five-minute monologues about Floréal's hair or Musichetta's laugh or, during a particularly unwise phase of their lives, Montparnasse's hands. This is different. Éponine hates it already. “No, I don't know.”

“You … I kind of think maybe you should. Know, I mean.” Grantaire props himself up on his elbows. “If you want. You could come with me next time I go to the children's museum. See for yourself.”

Éponine recognizes his expression not from the past but from the mirror. It's tight with anxiety and hope and bewilderment all at once, and she remembers that visceral stab of infatuation with Marius, and how much she'd wanted someone who would meet him and tell her she stood a chance even when she knew she didn't. “Gav says he's too old and I'm not exactly volunteer material.”

His shoulders relax a little. “Come on, you're more qualified than most of the rest of us trying to put together programs and herd crowds, you actually took care of kids. You'd be great.”

Grantaire talks a lot about the volunteers at the children's museum, most of them students at the local college who like working with kids and have all sorts of ideals about access and education that make Grantaire roll his eyes and Éponine wish she thought they were likely to happen any time soon. Éponine hasn't really cared about meeting them before, but if Grantaire is actually serious about one of them, maybe she should show up. She sighs. “Look, I'm not volunteering, but maybe I can casually stop by with your forgotten lunch next time there's an event so I can meet this person.”

“Yeah, but then everyone will think I'm your feckless lunch-forgetting trophy husband and will refuse to be seduced after that.” Grantaire props himself up on his elbows, apparently done prostrating himself with despair. “By which I mean you should absolutely do it. Then I can convince you to stay.”

Éponine sighs. “Fine, fine. Let me know next time and I will bring you a lunch that you have made in advance and meet whoever this is. Okay?”

Grantaire smiles at her, and there's something else new: it's not the smug grin he uses when he feels like he's won. It's genuinely happy, if a little nervous. “Great. Now let's figure out what the fuck is up with your bills so we've got time for a beer before the kids get home.”

Éponine thinks about demurring, but a beer actually sounds really good, so she beckons him over and settles down to work.

*

It turns out it's only a week before Grantaire's next day at the museum. He stops by her place in the morning with a literal paper bag lunch and a hang-dog expression and chats with Gav and Azelma for a few minutes before heading off.

“He's in love,” Éponine explains when the kids just look at her in his wake. “Apparently he wants me to meet this one.”

She uncharitably really wants to take a picture of their half-pitying half-exasperated faces and show it to Grantaire, but instead she stows it away, as well as Gav's dubious “Good luck, I guess.”

That echoes in Éponine's mind throughout the morning, before she packs up Grantaire's lunch and walks to the museum, leaving her siblings in the middle of homework that they will abandon the second she's out the door.

There's some kind of program going on—usually is on Saturdays, thus the influx of volunteers, and Éponine slips in past them and goes to the desk, where Jehan is at his post and greets her with a smile while seeming to do fourteen different things at once. “Looking for Grantaire?”

“He forgot his lunch. Should I leave it with you, or can I go find him?”

“He'll be happy to see you. He and Cosette are in the arts and crafts area right now and he's probably got a break coming up.”

Éponine gives him a nod and lets him be swallowed by the tide of parents going through the entryway while she goes up the back way to the arts and crafts room, which she can identify at a distance because of the noise. When she goes in, Grantaire is there, sure enough, covered in paint and kids, and while she expects to see Feuilly or one of the other artsy volunteers keeping the chaos reined in with him, there's a woman she doesn't recognize instead.

She's got brown hair swept up into some kind of complicated Pinterest style and a smudged apron over her clothes and she's crouched in front of a kid who's very seriously showing her something painted bright blue and likely still wet judging by the color of the kid's palm. Grantaire is watching them with a smile that immediately makes Éponine suspect just who she's there to meet, but when she comes in he transfers his attention to her in a second, smile growing out into a beam. “Hey, everyone, it's my friend Miss Éponine! Can I leave you all with Miss Cosette for just a minute?”

There's a chorus of lisping agreements, and the woman who must be Cosette gives Éponine a friendly smile. “I've heard so much about you—I've got lunch in fifteen if you want to stick around and get acquainted.”

Éponine blinks, a little surprised, because if Cosette wants to get to know one of Grantaire's best friends, it might be a sign that she feels about him the way he does about her, which might be a first. Grantaire is looking encouraging, halfway to pleading, so she sighs. “I'll see about it, but I didn't bring lunch for myself, just him.”

Cosette beams at her. “Volunteers get a free meal from the canteen.”

“I'm not a volunteer,” Éponine says, but she says it over her shoulder while Grantaire steers her out of the room. “Sure,” she mutters when they're clear of the chaos, “it's not suspicious to ask me to bring you lunch and then get me out of the room as fast as possible. What's Cosette going to think?”

“That I'm trying not to let you poison her against me, of course. Not that she'd let you, she is a better person than most people on this earth deserve, and—Enjolras, hey.”

Éponine looks up sharply at Grantaire's sudden change in tone. Grantaire's mentioned a lot of new volunteers lately, most of them fellow friends of Joly and Bossuet's, and she knows she's heard the name Enjolras, but friend of Joly and Bossuet's or not, anyone who can send Grantaire from effusive to subdued in under a second is someone to keep an eye on. Or several, since Éponine may be as gay as the day is long but that doesn't mean she can't appreciate when a man is beautiful, and Enjolras definitely is in an angry model kind of way. “Grantaire,” he says with a jerky nod. “Who's your friend?”

“I'm Éponine, and he forgot his lunch,” she says, fighting the urge to cross her arms.

“Well, I don't mean to interrupt.” Enjolras clears his throat. “Cosette is with the kids?”

Grantaire rolls his eyes. “No, I left them alone. Of course she is.”

“Good. That's good.” And with that pronouncement, Enjolras continues down the hall to wherever the hell he's going, leaving Grantaire's shoulders tight and somewhere near his ears.

Éponine lets Grantaire walk her all the way down to the lobby again before she hands him his lunch, and he doesn't mention Cosette or whatever the hell that was with Enjolras, but that alone is enough to let Éponine draw her own conclusions before she sends him back to work and tells him to send Cosette down. That makes him beam, which is both weird and a relief, and Éponine settles into leaning against a wall waiting for her to come down.

She comes down without her apron, and Éponine is forced to confront the fact that apparently “Ms. Frizzle” is both her type and Grantaire's, because the apron was covering up a dress all printed with stars and planets. Cosette looks around a bit before her eyes catch on Éponine, but then she comes right over, smiling the whole time, and Éponine thinks about what Grantaire said, that she's hard to look away from. She can see why he said it. “There you are. I figured it was about even odds that you would stick around.”

Somehow, it never occurred to Éponine to leave, and she tells herself firmly that it's because she needs to vet Cosette for Grantaire, whose taste in partners has never exactly been wise in the past. “I don't get a free meal from the canteen, you know.” And she can afford a spontaneous meal out now, at least once in a while, but she still hates doing it.

“Well, I can pay for yours. If you like.”

Éponine winces, because there wasn't pity there, but there was gentle probing that turns into pity too often for her tastes. “No, I'll be fine. Even if I'm not wild about dinosaur-themed food for lunch when my brother's dinosaur phase still seems way too recent.”

Cosette laughs. “Half and half? Seems only fair when I'm getting mine free.”

Éponine can probably live with that and keep her pride, so she nods and shoves her hands in her pockets to walk to the canteen, which is full of happy kids and harried parents and some stray volunteers running around, most of them vaguely familiar since they're all friends with Grantaire. Nobody bothers them while they get in line and order their lunches, though, Cosette paying for Éponine's whole meal before Éponine can stop her and then letting Éponine buy them both smoothies to make up for it.

She definitely wants to impress R's best friend, then, which is at least kind of a good sign, so Éponine sighs and starts in on making sure she's as worthy as she seems. “How long have you been volunteering here? R hadn't mentioned.”

Cosette's face knits up into a frown. “He hadn't? Well, it's only been a few weeks. I was looking for some volunteer hours to get me out of the library, and my friend Marius introduced me to Enjolras, who introduced me to the museum, which introduced me to Grantaire.”

Enjolras again. She'd thought maybe he was new, but it seems he's been around for a while, and Grantaire won't shut up about most of the volunteers. Grantaire talks about everyone he meets, makes near-strangers into stories, and when he doesn't, it doesn't tend to bode well. If he hasn't talked about Cosette or Enjolras, that makes two unknowns, and Éponine doesn't like that. “I know Marius,” she says instead of any of that. “He lived next door to my parents for a while.”

Cosette lights up, any worries about Grantaire not mentioning her to Éponine disappearing, and starts talking about Marius, and then about the rest of the volunteers at the museum. “But I'm only talking about myself,” she says eventually. “How long have you and Grantaire known each other?”

“Pretty much since I left my parents' place.”

“You take care of your siblings, right?”

Éponine tries not to look too sharp at her for that. Grantaire wouldn't tell just anyone that. Usually he lets her explain Azelma and Gav to new people on her own terms. “Yeah. Gavroche and Azelma.”

“I'm glad,” says Cosette, a little too warmly, and then looks down at her plate when Éponine frowns at her. “You probably don't remember me, but I wondered when I heard your name, and then I heard Azelma's name too, and I went to your parents' daycare for a while when I was a kid.”

“Shit.” Kids went in and out of Éponine's life when she was a kid, and she doesn't remember anyone named Cosette, but now that she's looking, there's something a little familiar about her. “I'm really sorry about—”

“No, I—I really don't want an apology, God knows I know the things our parents do aren't our fault. I just wondered if it was you, and hoped things are better for you now, that's all.”

Éponine knows she's red in the face just from that much, but she tries not to let it show. Instead, she takes a few bites of her lunch. It's space-themed, not dinosaur-themed, so between that and Cosette's dress the museum is probably having some kind of space day. “Yeah, they're better. Thanks to the kids and R and not being around the rest of my family.”

“Good. Things are pretty good for me these days too,” says Cosette, and her smile lights up her face and makes it a little easier to pretend they're any two normal people having lunch at the children's museum. “Especially around here. Grantaire says you technically don't volunteer here?”

“I really don't. Too busy. The 'technically' is just wishful thinking.”

“His, I assume.” Cosette, because she's apparently a perfect person, doesn't make Éponine fill an awkward silence after that comment, just forges on, talking about her father, her friends at the museum, her classes and how she's enjoying university. She doesn't ask a lot of questions, but she leaves spaces in the conversation, and Éponine lets herself fill them, and tries not to spend too much time weighing what she should and shouldn't say.

Cosette only has so long for a lunch break, though, and Éponine is almost relieved when it's over, because she's having too easy a time talking to Cosette, is liking her too much, and while she doesn't subscribe to some stupid idea that Cosette belongs to Grantaire just because he has a crush on her, she still wouldn't date someone her best friend professes to be in love with.

“I really have to run,” Cosette says after a look at her phone, “but ask Grantaire for my number, we should meet up sometime when I'm not in a hurry.” Her smile is way too bright for anyone who actually lives in reality, and she clasps Éponine's hand instead of shaking it or hugging her or anything else that makes sense. “It was so nice to meet you. I suppose I should say again, but I think we can ignore childhoods for now.”

“I guess so,” says Éponine, and then Cosette has disappeared, which is probably good because she has no idea what else to say.

_Tentative approval_ , she texts Grantaire when she starts walking home, and hates that she feels anything even close to a pang of regret at that.

_Wait, really? Didn't think that was the world's best impression._

If that was Cosette making a bad impression, she may not survive a good one. _Maybe I just trust you._

_Cool, at least one of us does._

Éponine sighs, but she tucks her phone away because there's really no use arguing with him when he's in one of those moods.

*

“Cosette asked for your number,” Grantaire says when he turns up at her door a few days later, bringing takeout with the psychic ability he has to know she was just trying to get up the energy to decide what to make for dinner.

“Is that weird for you?” she asks, ushering him in and taking the food. Azelma is at the table and definitely making some kind of face about someone asking for Éponine's number, but at least Gav is shut in his room brooding like a teenager. “And yeah, she mentioned wanting to be in touch. Probably a sign of how much she likes you, right?”

Grantaire snorts. “I think Floréal would kill me if I said that two women talking was because of me. She would just know somehow and then appear out of the night to commit straight-up homicide.”

“She's awesome,” Azelma sighs, looking up from her homework.

“She definitely is, and also Grantaire is right. And yeah, R, give me Cosette's number, or her mine, or whatever. Have you been hanging out or something?”

His face softens while they start plating up the food—some kind of curry, looks like. “A bunch of the volunteers met up for dinner last night—Enjolras's idea, said we should try to be more cohesive, start doing some planning ourselves to free up the museum for other things since they can't afford a full-time planning director right now.”

“Right, Enjolras,” she says, because she still hasn't had a straight answer from him about whatever the hell that was in the hallway.

She's not going to get an answer now either, it seems, because Grantaire just shrugs and goes back to concentrating on the food while she starts filling up a pitcher with water. “He's already friends with pretty much all the people I am, so apparently we're going to be some kind of Scooby gang now, I guess.”

“With Cosette along. And that's … good?”

“I sure as hell hope so,” says Grantaire, and other than Cosette's number on her phone, that's all she gets out of him for the whole night.

*

Cosette calls a few days later, and Éponine almost doesn't pick up just because she can't remember the last time someone actually called her instead of texting. “Has Grantaire invited you to dinner tomorrow night?” Cosette asks as soon as they've said their hellos, and Éponine blinks at the wall, trying to catch her brain on to whatever is going on.

“He hasn't mentioned a dinner, but it's not like we're attached at the hip. He's single,” she adds, hoping that she doesn't sound too pointed about it.

“That's … good? I guess. Though perhaps he doesn't agree.” Ouch. Éponine has always been a shitty wingwoman, but usually not that shitty. “Anyway, if he wants you to get involved with the museum crowd, he should invite you to dinners and things. So I'm going to do it for him! You're welcome to come, and I'd be happy to see you. I really liked talking to you at the museum.”

Normally, Éponine's objection to hanging out with Grantaire's friends is that she doesn't have the time and the energy left after a day of work and taking care of the kids to volunteer or have an evening out that's more complicated than drinks. This time the objection is that she's starting to get fluttery over the woman her best friend is infatuated with. Which is a bad idea. It's a really bad idea. Grantaire deserves everything good in the world, and Cosette can make her own choices, but Éponine refuses to even think about breaking his heart.

But she's less busy than she used to be. And Grantaire stopped inviting her out after the twentieth time she said no because of money or time, but she's more okay now. The kids are older. Her job pays better. Maybe she still doesn't have time to volunteer at the museum, but she can have dinner once in a while, and that might make Grantaire just as happy as dating Cosette would. Or at least something like it.

“Sure. Dinner. I can do dinner, I think.”

“Oh! I wasn't quite prepared for you to say yes, but I'm very glad, and everyone else will be too, I'm sure. I'll text you the details? I'd give them to you on the phone but then I'd just have to text them to you anyway if you're anything like me and never have scrap paper around.”

“A text sounds good. I'm definitely more likely to remember it that way.”

Cosette sounds like she's smiling when she answers. “I definitely want you to remember.”

Éponine has to remind herself several times when she hangs up that Grantaire is professing his love for Cosette, and even if Cosette is sounding something slightly more than friendly, she doesn't want to cross that line. It mostly works.

*

Éponine goes to the restaurant alone, mostly because she's not quite ready to explain to Grantaire who invited her and how that happened. Even though he knows. Éponine hates feeling guilty about something that isn't even a crush yet, especially when she knows that if it went anywhere Grantaire would just complain for a night or two, make her buy him his next few drinks, and wish her well.

Still, she feels like she's doing something illicit when she walks through the door of the warmly lit cafe Cosette told her to come to and walks toward the table of museum volunteers, where Courfeyrac is holding forth on some kind of subject and Grantaire appears to be doodling illustrations on a napkin. Jehan is the first person to see her, calling her name out across the cafe and getting her way more interest than she wants from the table, specifically Grantaire and Cosette.

Grantaire blinks and then beams, and Cosette gets up to greet her, tugging her by the arm to the table like maybe she didn't see them there and shoving her into a seat before turning to Grantaire. “I invited her. I'd ask if you mind, but I'm pretty sure you don't.”

“How could I? Even if she's sneaky. Do you know everyone, Ep?”

She mostly does, getting a beam out of Marius once he's done sighing at Courfeyrac and quick greetings from everyone else. The one from Enjolras seems weirdly weighty, but after a few minutes she figures out that apparently everything he says is weirdly weighty. He doesn't talk a whole lot, but whenever he does, everyone shuts up and listens, and Grantaire most of all.

Éponine knows Grantaire better than almost anyone else. She knows his too-casual comments when he's trying to bait someone, because he does it with Gavroche when he's trying to start a play-fight, with Floréal when he's feeling masochistic, and never with Éponine because he knows she hates it. So she knows what he's doing when he needles Enjolras, or thinks she does. It's Joly who makes her pay attention, the way he bites his lip and looks worried every time Grantaire opens his mouth, and seems relieved when Enjolras ignores him or responds gently.

Other people, she starts noticing as a waiter takes their order and goes off to get it started, wince too, or distract them from each other, but Grantaire is intent, and Enjolras responds, every time. Once or twice he takes a deep breath like he wants to be sharp, but instead he draws him out until the needling turns into low-voiced conversation right about the time their food arrives.

Éponine watches the way they're in each other's space, the way they lean in and the way Grantaire gets can't seem to look away. When Cosette interrupts the conversation to ask Grantaire a question, he smiles at her, warm and happy, but she's not pulling his focus.

Fuck, Éponine is stupid sometimes, and she stands up one bite into her panini. “Sorry,” she says when a few people look up from the conversations she's doing a shitty job at taking part in. “I forgot to tell Azelma that Gavroche is allowed to be out past curfew tonight and she doesn't need to go looking for him if he's not in. Be right back.”

That at least has the benefit of being the truth, but Éponine could solve that with a text instead of ducking out onto the sidewalk and calling her, which Azelma tells her in between complaining that Éponine interrupted her CW marathon. When she hangs up, she stands there for a minute, the chilly evening air making her breath mist.

The restaurant door opens, and she expects it to be Grantaire, but instead it's Cosette, because of course it is, while Éponine is still sorting out all the things she does and doesn't need to feel guilty about. “R wanted to come,” says Cosette, brows pinched up and not smiling that smile of hers for once, “but I said I would instead. Partly because he and Enjolras are actually talking about things, but also partly because … am I being completely self-centered if I think some of this is because of me? If only because I was the one who asked you—asked you to come?”

“Were you asking me out?” Cosette flinches like Éponine yelled at her, which is an answer on its own, and Éponine scrubs her hand across her face, because she's fucked this up, and she kind of thinks there's something good at the end of this, but right now the embarrassment and the feeling stupid is still kind of outweighing the good part. “Fuck. The problem is that I thought R was in love with you.”

Cosette doesn't immediately start protesting, or ask why the fuck Éponine would think that, or anything else. She nods, thinks about it for a while, lets Éponine stare out at the street and keep on working through the shitty feelings so maybe she can get to the hopeful ones. “He's not,” she finally says. “Or else I'm really misinterpreting things. But considering he heard me say I'm bi and then spent twenty minutes of a lunch break talking up his best friend before bringing you by really obviously I don't think I'm misinterpreting.”

Fuck R and his stupid matchmaking and his knowing she would have said no to that part of his apparently complicated and devious lunch-bringing plan, because if he'd just told her, she would have had a way less stressful time. “I guess maybe he thought I would figure it out, but he was having fun with you and things were weird with Enjolras, so I thought you were a way likelier candidate.”

“Things are always weird with them. But kind of getting better, I think? I haven't known them long, but tonight's been pretty good for them.”

Sometime Éponine is going to have to have a talk with Grantaire about how he can never let himself have easy things and make sure he's being healthy, and she's going to have to call Joly and ask a lot of questions about Enjolras, who's a lot harder to read than Cosette but, she thinks, a good person. “God, he's a dick.”

Cosette laughs a little. “Maybe. But I was really happy when I met you. But then you didn't seem very interested, so I thought maybe just friends. Which is good! I don't know enough women, I could always use more as friends too.”

“I was feeling like shit for thinking about how great you are when my best friend had a crush on you.” She has to sneak a look sideways at that and finds Cosette beaming at her, not bothering to watch the street like Éponine is, just waiting there for Éponine to be brave enough to face her. She's not quite brave enough yet, but the quick look is enough to keep her steady. “But if he doesn't, and if you're interested, that adds a whole new host of problems involving me having two kids to raise and no free time. I would be a shitty girlfriend, which is why I haven't dated in a while.”

“I think maybe we can take it step by step, but if you don't want to try, I'll respect that. Like I said, I like having friends. I just also think that you're incredible and beautiful and interesting and that you'll still be interesting even when you're less mysterious. It's a pretty good start.”

Éponine is going to have some choice words for Grantaire, but Cosette is waiting, patient, and if she's waiting for a yes, maybe she'll be willing to wait, to go slow, to know Éponine can't be spontaneous or do big gestures but that she can do nights on the couch and does a kickass French braid and knows how to cook. Gav and Azelma won't mind—both of them worry about her to an extent that would be embarrassing if it didn't make her smile at the same time, and they're old enough not to need babysitters. If there's a time, it's now. “It might be. I can't quite say yes yet, but—if it helps, I think I'm going to.”

“I don't need helping. But it certainly makes me happy.”

Éponine finally smiles, finally breaking through all the choking embarrassment and preemptive worry to the good feelings past them.

They stay outside the restaurant for another few minutes, until Bahorel pokes his head out the door to tell them that if they aren't going to make out they should come in before someone eats their food.

They don't hold hands, they don't say anything, but their entrance is the only thing that makes Grantaire look up from his conversation with Enjolras, and he smiles, a little hopeful and a little smug. _You okay?_ he mouths, even though he has to know people are watching.

Later, she's going to confess the whole story to him, let him laugh and apologize and make him tell her about Enjolras. For now, she just gives a quick nod, subtler than he was, and sits back down to eat. After a few seconds, Cosette's knee nudges into hers and stays there, and Éponine leans just a little bit into the touch before she lets Feuilly draw her into a conversation about museum programs for low-income kids.

When she sneaks a glance to her side, Cosette is smiling, and Éponine finds that she's doing the same.


End file.
